Incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has responded to his lost presidential election after nearly two days of radio silence. At his presidential palace, he thanked voters in a speech of less than two minutes on Tuesday afternoon local time. He said he would “abide by the constitution”, but did not explicitly say anything about his defeat. Earlier on Tuesday, his communications minister, Fábio Faria, had already announced that Bolsonaro would not contest the election results.
In the night from Sunday to Monday, the Brazilian Electoral Council declared Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva the winner of the presidential elections. Lula, who was president between 2003 and 2011, won narrowly, taking 50.9 percent of the vote, compared to 49.1 percent for incumbent President Bolsonaro. Lula will take office for the second time on January 1, 2023.
While world leaders congratulated Lula on his victory, Bolsonaro was silent. Former infrastructure minister under Bolsonaro, Tarcisio de Freitas, said after the election results that congratulating Lula is part of the democratic tradition. De Freitas, who was elected governor of São Paulo state, added that he hoped Lula would prove himself president of all Brazilians – a promise Lula already made after the election results were announced.
highway blocks
Some of Bolsonaro’s supporters made themselves heard on Monday, including by blocking roads in the country. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the police to clear the hundreds of closed roads a day later. More than 300 blockades had been lifted on Tuesday afternoon, according to Reuters news agency, but 260 were still in effect.
According to some analysts, Bolsonaro, who has previously openly questioned the reliability of Brazil’s electoral system, would have liked to see how the situation on the streets would develop and how political actors around him would react to the election results. It soon became clear that people around him would not dispute the result. It emerged that his chief of staff Ciro Nogueira and his vice president Hamilton Mourao had already contacted the Lula camp before Bolsonaro broke the silence to discuss a transfer of power.
Also read: President Bolsonaro’s silence is telling